Differences in Results Obtained by Students of Different Faculties

Abstract

The paper presents and discusses the results of statistical analysis of differences among scores obtained by students of different faculties of the University of Economics in Prague. The analysed dataset contains the scores for 2256 students that took basic mathematics course during the academic year 2013/2014. A two way analysis of variance was performed with semester and faculty as main factors. The interaction between these two factors was also considered. Students have to take two tests. At first, the sum of the scores obtained from both tests is analysed and then, the two tests are analysed separately. It turns out that the significance of factors is the same in the three analyses. The assumptions of linear models are verified. Due to problem of heteroscedasticity, weighted least squares are used and the possibility of using Box-Cox transformation is also discussed, as the errors are not normally distributed. Finally, the differences between the faculties are described.

Differences in Results – Analysis of Mathematics Scores from Subsequent Academic Years

“…From the results it can be observed that students tend to score better in the summer semester than in winter semester in each academic year. This finding supports the conclusions from papers written in previous years [8], [9], which were based on data from one academic year only. Moreover, the effect of semester is statistically significant in both models (mid-term test score and final test score).…”

“…An extensive analysis was conducted by Ulrychová in [12], who analysed differences in mathematics results between students of University of Economics, Prague and students of the University of Finance and Administration in Prague. We analysed the differences between performance of students coming from different faculties of the University of Economics [8] and we also discussed the impact of exam date on the performance [9].…”

“…We analysed the mid-term test scores and final test scores from both semesters and from five consecutive academic years. This paper is an extension of our previous research, i.e., [8] and [9], where we only analysed scores from one academic year.…”

Analysis of the scores of competency test

“…A lack of motivation to study and the insufficient level of mathematical knowledge from primary and secondary schools rank among the most serious causes. This paper was motivated by articles [2][3][8][9][10][11], where the decreasing level of knowledge was discussed as well.…”

“…Interesting is paper [9], where they investigate influences of the fail-rates of students who studied on a Bachelors´ degree programme at the selected university. In [11], the differences between the scores obtained by the students of different faculties are discussed.…”